Started working on a new RPG pirates game. It still hasn't got a name, but what it does have is a lot of ambitions.

very strange. what kind of style is this? it's not pixel art but it's not 3d and it's not vector.

I mean it is pixel art, it's just that it's animated with a program called Spine.

[-=Early Pre-Alpha Available=-]

-=Early Pre-Alpha Available=-

An early pre-alpha version of this game is available at itch.io for testing purposes. We want to know if people would be interested in this game, and would want to see it finished. So if you could please leave a comment at itch.io page that would mean a lot to us. Thank you!

LINK TO THE GAME:
https://thinkinsidetheboxgms.itch.io/my-neighbour

Town looks charming and tasks seems like a pretty good idea! What kind of activies will you have to carry out for the tasks though?

Thank you! There will be various tasks like clean the town, catch a fish that only swims by at certain moment or find a hidden object somewhere in the town. These are simple Animal Crossing like tasks to knock you off of your regular routine.

Wow, looks cool, man! Did you make animations with programming way? O_O

Thanks dude. We use a program called Spine to animate, it helped to save a lot of time.

finally an update. looking juicy, still loving the contrast. characters are all quickly recognizable. keep it  100

are the quests/tasks part of a larger narrative or is it more procedurally friendly?

Thanks dude.

There isn't an in-depth narrative that develops as you progress in the game.
The short story is: You destroy town's hospital and now it's your responsibility to rebuild. But you can't do it all on your own and so you need a helping hand for the townspeople. But they are not willing to help you since, of course, you destroyed their hospital (it's like and endless loop), and so you need to get your reputation back. That's where tasks fit in. Basically you complete random tasks, given out by the townspeople, to restore your reputation. You choose when and which tasks to complete.

It seems like forever since we posted our last post on TIGSource. But we've been workig hard adding lot's of new stuff to the game, like: fishing, dungeon exploring, crafting; but more on that later.

We also added 8 new characters, which brings a total of 14, each with their own personality, walking patterns and dialogues.

The town is redesigned as well, now it's bigger, wackier... also there is a dump.

Finally we added tasks, which are given to you by the townspeople. This gives a little bit more of a varied gameplay, since now not only you have to take care of your farm, but also help townspeople out with their problems. Huzzah

More to come and in the meantime here is a sneak peek of a new town:

Dark and damp cave, a place where you'll find resources for you handmade machinery and buildings.

Very nice logo.

Thanks!

looking delicious my man. keep grinding.

Thanks dude.

I just realised that the main character reminds me of Jim and Hilda Bloggs from "Where the Wind Blows".

Actually, the setting kind of looks like it comes from the second half of that book too

There are no nuclear explosions though. 

I love the graphics and the game idea looks so silly that it would be actually fun to play it. Can't wait to try it out.

Thank you!

And here we see a chef of a local dinner casually smoking. This is the place where you'll sell all of your homemade "edible" atrocities.

Oh yeah, by the way here is new game's logo/title screen.

I do like those physics- looks like a ton of fun!

You were talking about furniture being mostly decorative. Perhaps you could tie having nice stuff to his mood somehow?

Funny you said that, because that is exactly what we were planning to do in the early stage of development. However we decided to scrap mood & hunger stats from the game as they felt unnecessary and did not work well with the game mechanics. The game isn't designed fully yet, so we might make those furniture more useful. Thanks!

By happenstance I just watched the episode of Community where they're in a pixel art game. Then when I looked at your screenshots I was like "wow, actually..."



The mechanics and the visuals (the bald farmer = Pierce?) actually seem kinda similar. Have you seen the episode? 

I used to watch Community and remember quite liking it, though i never got past second season, so i haven't seen this particular episode, but i did see some clips from it and the game's graphic designer haven't even heard of this show. I do see some similarities, but Bedford's design is based on a real life character.

P.S. Now you intrigued me to watch some more Community. 

Things falling are really mesmerizing to see! Is it animated with physics?

All the animation was done with a program called Spine, however most of objects in a game work in a physics world and has physical properties to increase wackiness factor.

-----

In other news. A local man builds his own production machinery in his basement and produces highest quality dishes that is successfully sold to a nearby snack bar. Products include burnt raspberry rolls, moldy cucumber buns, and wonder juice - made of sauerkraut, chili peppers & lemons with worms in it. Some people wait several ours to get a chance to taste these finest delicacies .

I am very worried about the carbon monoxide poisoning in that basement

Seriously it looks lovely. The nonsense levels are just right

Thanks and don't worry there is a ventilation duct, he also keeps his door open, well most of the time at least. Besides those masonry ovens spit out an equivalent amount of smoke of merely a SMALL burning tire factory, so it's all good.

First time seeing this, and as others have said, love the 2D take on the farming genre and the physical feel it has! Basement looks wacky, does having more machines let you produce more products and faster?

Yeah, the more machinery you have the faster and more varied products you'll be able to produce. You can also destroy your machines and build a different ones in its place.

So here it is level 2 basement (almost done), a place of all your homemade machinery (at least legal ones), like masonry oven made of car muffler and tires.

So basically level 2 basement is a place where all of your crafted machinery goes. These brilliant inventions grant you an ability to produce various product from your crops, which later can be sold to a local snack bar owner.

For the past few weeks we've been trying to put the game together into a working entity, also adding a lot of small details. One of them is a bubble cloud, a tiny feature that adds some clarity to the game.

Also this gif demonstrates a new sowing animation we did ages ago.

Can you go on quests with the Neighbors?

Not really, your from different social strata, it's like Lady and the Tramp thing except without happy ending.

UPDATE:

We are currently working on a lot of backstage stuff, so we don't have much to show. Anyways here are some cows Bedford's planning to raise in his basement.

Neighbors going berserk is a must-have feature. I love this game more and more with every bit of new information.

Thanks!

UPDATE:

We are finally done with the neighbors, there are still few things that needs to be done, but they are at last walking, breathing things so to speak. It was a bit tricky task to code their AI, if you could call it that, but in my opinion neighbors turned out pretty fun. Here they are Agnes and Reginald, the latter is trying hard to clean up the mess Bedford just made.